Line of sight wireless / Private IP

Posts: 174 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jun 12, 2006 Posts: 174

Ok . . . here is what I'm about to get into -- I'd appreciate any thoughts on whether Vonage will work:

I will have (installed today) wireless broadband (this is wireless, line of sight, to a tower about 3 miles from my home); connection speed is rated 768 down / 256 up, and tests out at about that (testmyvoip.com) when I've tested it at another users location. I feel pretty good that Vonage would work with this connection.

Now, my bigger question -- I won't have a public IP address that I can route -- with most cable / dsl connection, your broadband router will have a public address on the WAN (Internet) side, then assign private addresses inside your network. Whether that public address is static or dynamic does not matter, but, it will be public, and I can then configure my router any way that I want. With my service, the wireless antennae has a router built-in that I cannot access -- THAT router gets the public address and passes a private address to the WAN side of my router.

Of course, this means that any INBOUND traffic is stopped at THEIR router. What does this mean for Vonage?

So, in a nutshell, of course, my real question is -- do I have to be able to receive INBOUND Internet traffic for Vonage to work? I've seen so many thoughts that seem to go in both directions that I'm rather lost at this point!!

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm Post subject:

In most situations Vonage adapters (and routers) are able to overcome any simple NAT situations. If the wireless antenna router is functioning as a firewall as well then there are ports that may need to be opened. If that is the case and you have no way to have those ports opened then Vonage will not work.

I suspect Vonage will work in your situation enough that I can recommend you try it. Note that, based on reports here, you may have some difficulty (i.e. need to spend some time on the phone) cancelling if it doesn't work so please factor that into your decision.

I would recommend reading
Vonage Service and Firewalls

Besides finding someone with Vonage to help you test I can not think of any way to guarantee Vonage success. You could try a SIP SoftPhone with a free provider, but the "SIP through NAT" technology may be different.

SIP Services:Slowly Rolling Forward (Google Cache) wrote:

Some vendors get around the dynamic port problem by encapsulating SIP's RTP and UDP media flows in HTTP or HTTPS. This allows SIP media to pass through HTTP's well-known port 80 or HTTPS's port 443, although it does add some overhead and expose the SIP traffic to additional processing. Vonage's "SIP thru NAT" and Raindance's forthcoming videoconferencing service appear to be examples of this approach.

Posts: 533

rgnok wrote:

Ok . . . here is what I'm about to get into -- I'd appreciate any thoughts on whether Vonage will work:

I will have (installed today) wireless broadband (this is wireless, line of sight, to a tower about 3 miles from my home); connection speed is rated 768 down / 256 up, and tests out at about that (testmyvoip.com) when I've tested it at another users location. I feel pretty good that Vonage would work with this connection.

Now, my bigger question -- I won't have a public IP address that I can route -- with most cable / dsl connection, your broadband router will have a public address on the WAN (Internet) side, then assign private addresses inside your network. Whether that public address is static or dynamic does not matter, but, it will be public, and I can then configure my router any way that I want. With my service, the wireless antennae has a router built-in that I cannot access -- THAT router gets the public address and passes a private address to the WAN side of my router.

Of course, this means that any INBOUND traffic is stopped at THEIR router. What does this mean for Vonage?

So, in a nutshell, of course, my real question is -- do I have to be able to receive INBOUND Internet traffic for Vonage to work? I've seen so many thoughts that seem to go in both directions that I'm rather lost at this point!!

Vonage goes on and on about port forwarding, but in my experience, all traffic is outbound from you. Vonage does not establish any traffic to you, except icmp echo packets so they can determine whether your adapter is up.

If there is anything inbound, blocking it doesn't affect your service.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

Rgnok, you've gotten some good advice already. I'd add that as soon as your service is up and running you should run a Voip test at www.testyourvoip.com . Do a test call to Boston. If it works and gives you good results, then it's highly likely that Vonage will work well with your service.

Posts: 174 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jun 12, 2006 Posts: 174

Thanks for the respones! The broadband service is up and running, and, much to my surprise, they did not install mine like they have every other install I've seen (it's a small town and I've seen a fair number of their installs); they actually put the static public IP address on MY router and disabled the router on their equipment, so that is good.

Now on to service -- real world my connection is running around ~500 down (no concern at all) but only around ~120 up. www.testmyvoip.com works and seems to give me results around "As good as a decent cell phone" consistently on tests to Boston and San Jose. The speed test here consistently reports about the same sort of results.

Soooo . . . I'm a bit concerned about the download speed on my line, but I think I will take the leap and give it a try tonight!

Posts: 533

rgnok wrote:

Thanks for the respones! The broadband service is up and running, and, much to my surprise, they did not install mine like they have every other install I've seen (it's a small town and I've seen a fair number of their installs); they actually put the static public IP address on MY router and disabled the router on their equipment, so that is good.

Now on to service -- real world my connection is running around ~500 up (no concern at all) but only around ~120 down. www.testmyvoip.com works and seems to give me results around "As good as a decent cell phone" consistently on tests to Boston and San Jose. The speed test here consistently reports about the same sort of results.

Soooo . . . I'm a bit concerned about the download speed on my line, but I think I will take the leap and give it a try tonight!

Keep in mind if you order Vonage and it doesn't work well for you, you only have 14 days from the day you place your order to return it for a full refund. It could take a week to get your gear if you order direct from Vonage, so that really only gives you a week of testing to determine whether it's for you or not. Good luck!

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 4:05 pm Post subject:

Terms of service say;

Quote:

(a) Residential and Small Business Customers. We offer a thirty (30) day money back guarantee from the date of activation of your Service

What are you talking about?

Posts: 533 · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:25 pm Post subject:

scerruti wrote:

Terms of service say;

Quote:

(a) Residential and Small Business Customers. We offer a thirty (30) day money back guarantee from the date of activation of your Service

What are you talking about?

Excuse me...they must have just changed it to 30 days.

Posts: 174 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jun 12, 2006 Posts: 174

First, re: the 30 days vs. 14 days -- it seems from another thread here that they've been going back and forth between the 30 day period and the 14 day period . . .

But, back to me. I was buying retail -- bought the PAP2 this afternoon, activated it a couple of hours ago, and, so far, it has passed the all important WIFE test -- that is, she can't tell any difference.

I've not gotten deep into any testing or comparing surfing performance or anything just yet, but right now, things look promising!

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

rgnok wrote:

Soooo . . . I'm a bit concerned about the download speed on my line, but I think I will take the leap and give it a try tonight!

Are you getting the download speed for which you're paying? If not, I wouldn't let them get by with it. You'll probably get more attention now as a brand new customer than you would later.